


Love is a Life-Taker

by nihilegi



Series: Ours [2]
Category: Baby Driver (2017)
Genre: Multi, Original Character(s), Recreational Drug Use, sorry it was kind of unavoidable
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-08
Updated: 2017-08-08
Packaged: 2018-12-13 00:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11748264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilegi/pseuds/nihilegi
Summary: “I don’t know if we’re doing right by him, but I know we’re doing better than anyone else could be.”





	Love is a Life-Taker

**Author's Note:**

> This is kind of an interlude between the first and third parts of the series. There's nothing in here that's really relevant to the overall story arc, so you can skip it if you'd like.

“Can’t believe you’re actually leaving,” Cruze said, massaging his nose. His pupils were blown comically wide. “It seems like you two just got here.”

“Gotta keep moving, Matherne. That’s the motto,” Darling said, propping her long legs up on Cruze’s desk. He laughed.

“I guess that’s true when you’re in your line of work. I hate to see you go, though.”

“Are you hitting on my wife?” Buddy asked, cocking an eyebrow to show he wasn’t serious. Darling batted at his arm.

“Nah, man. You know she’s not my type,” Cruze said, winking at Buddy, who rolled his eyes in response and leaned forward over the desk.

He used their elevator key to cut another line of coke from the pile on the desk, snorting it directly off the wood and leaning back, letting his eyes fall shut. God, it would never get old. His eyes fluttered open after a few moments to see Cruze and Darling looking at him expectantly.

“Sorry, what was the question?” He asked, rubbing at his nose and letting out a sigh.

“Didn’t mean to interrupt, Tony Montana,” Cruze laughed. “I just asked where you were heading to next.”

“I’m not sure. I was thinking Italy, actually,” Buddy said, shrugging his shoulder. “I’d have to brush up on my Italian—”

“Amateur,” Darling said under her breath. Buddy ignored her.

“—but I think the kid would like it there. Hell, Darling’s been asking me to go ever since she learned the damn language.” 

Cruze looked thoughtful, tapping an erratic rhythm on the desk in front of him while Darling cut herself another line. Somehow, Buddy already knew what he was going to ask before he even opened his mouth. 

“Speaking of the kid, what the fuck is going on there? Don’t tell me you’ve gotten soft, all of a sudden. You starting a home for wayward teenagers?”

Buddy didn’t really care for his tone (and was about to tell him so), but Darling beat him to the punch. 

“First of all, he’s twenty-one. Not a teenager. Secondly, it’s not like that. Don’t fucking talk about shit you don’t understand,” she said, probably more harshly than she would have if she wasn’t high. Cruze raised his hands defensively.

“I didn’t mean anything by it, Monica. Honest. It’s just strange to see someone else become a part of whatever you two have going on,” he said, nodding between her and Buddy. 

“Trust me, man. We didn’t see it coming either,” Buddy said lowly, acutely aware of how his leg was bouncing.

A companionable silence fell over them, then. Cruze wasn’t a bad guy, and Buddy knew that. He was just “quick to speak and slow to think,” as he himself had said before. There had been something between the two of them, _years_ ago, before Buddy had met Darling. Buddy had been different back then. It was right after he’d left Wall Street behind, when he was still young and erratic. It had been good for a couple months, but then Cruze had decided to go straight – straight in terms of criminal activity, not in terms of sexuality – and the two of them had parted ways amicably. 

Buddy felt himself start to come down, suddenly hyperaware of his own age. Fuck, how long had it been? _Twenty years_? He was getting old.

He thought of Baby, young and beautiful and probably still naked in their bed upstairs. He’d kissed Buddy and Darling goodbye a few hours beforehand, fully aware of what they were leaving the room to do. Buddy couldn’t tell how he felt about their drug use. The kid _had_ known what he was getting in to, right? 

He didn’t want to push the limits of Baby’s understanding nature and bring their bad habits into the penthouse with them. He and Darling always came down to Cruze’s office to get high, who was absolutely fine with it as long as they were providing the product.

Apparently, some aspects of the criminal lifestyle weren’t so easily left in the past.

Darling reached out to take Buddy’s hand, squeezing his fingers as if she could sense his train of thought. He’d said before that she was better at emotional shit than he was, and he stood by that. Hell, she gotten _Baby_ to open up to them. That in itself was incredible.

“Sorry, Cruze. I think my husband’s done being good company,” she said, and Cruze nodded good-naturedly.

“Yeah, it’s probably about time to call it a night,” Cruze said, looking at his watch. “ _My_ husband will probably be up waiting for me.”

Darling expertly packed up the rest of the coke, passing Cruze an eightball for his trouble.

“Take that home to your boy,” she said sweetly, standing on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

“Yeah, I will. It was good talking to you. I know Italy is exciting and all, but don’t go running off in the middle of the night without saying goodbye.” 

Cruze pressed a kiss to Buddy’s cheek, and they parted ways: Buddy and Darling walking across the lobby and Cruze walking out towards the parking lot.

“Italy, huh?” Darling asked, as soon as they were alone in the elevator.

 “Yeah, it’ll be fun. We can be close to the Vatican. You’re Catholic, right?”

 “I’m a lot of things,” she said thoughtfully, rubbing her nose again.

 “That you are.”

 He wasn’t sure when stepping out of the elevator and into the penthouse _began_ to feel like coming home, but he was suddenly filled with an unnamable emotion upon entering the living room. Darling moved past him like, clearly not having the same inner turmoil that Buddy was, and put the duffle with the cocaine in it back in the kitchen cabinet under the sink.

 Violet Hill was playing at a low volume, altering reality even further. Buddy hadn’t even known Baby listened to Coldplay. It seemed too contemporary for his pretentious music taste.

 “Oh, hey,” Baby said, wandering out of their bedroom and rubbing his eyes sleepily. He looked so soft and young, wearing a pair of Buddy’s sweats and nothing else. The feeling in Buddy’s chest intensified tenfold.

 “Hello, my love,” Darling replied, pulling him into a tender kiss. Baby’s hands came to rest on her waist confidently. Buddy watched them, feeling like the breath had been knocked out of him.

 “Want me to order pizza?” Baby asked, and Darling said something in reply, flipping her short hair and laughing. Their words passed right through him before he was even able to register them. Fuck, he was still high. _Far_ higher than he’d thought he was.

  _“Are we doing the right thing?”_ He’d asked Darling a couple of nights ago, out on the balcony. The memory was fuzzy in his current state, but he still remembered her response clearly.

_“I don’t know if we’re doing right by him, but I know we’re doing better than anyone else could be.”_

He was so young, though. He could still have a future ahead of him. Buddy wasn’t _old_ , per se, but he was definitely too old to cut his losses and start over.

( _Again_ , his mind provided unhelpfully.)

Darling herself was toeing the line: on one hand, she wasn’t yet thirty. On the other, she was a part of the most highly publicized ongoing criminal investigation in recent history. She _could_ start over, but it was going to take a lot more than a haircut and a dye job for her to rejoin society.

 Baby, on the other hand, was just barely in his twenties. He could still get out. He was younger than Cruze had been when he went straight, and he had far fewer felonies under his belt. If they _actually_ took him to Italy, Buddy couldn’t foresee a future where Baby could return to a normal life.

 Hell, he couldn’t even foresee a future for him that didn’t involve himself and Darling.

 He looked back at the two people he loved. They were still talking animatedly about something, Baby matching Darling’s drug-induced enthusiasm easily. She rested a hand on Baby’s upper arm lightly, and Buddy’s eyes were drawn to it intrinsically. After a beat that seemed to last a lifetime, she flipped her hair. For one brief, shining moment, he could see both of their tattoos at the same time.

 Fuck. Maybe it _was_ already too late for the kid.

 “Buddy? What’s wrong?”

 Buddy snapped out of his daze and turned to look at Baby, who was staring at him with a concerned expression. Only half aware of his actions, he held his arm out. Baby stepped into his personal space without hesitation, folding himself into Buddy’s body. Buddy placed a searing kiss on his boy’s lips and the younger man keened into him, opening his mouth without hesitation.

 “Baby,” Buddy said, pulling back abruptly. A trail of saliva still connected their lips, and it (probably) would have been gross if Buddy wasn’t so fucking high and _so_ fucking in love. As it was, they both ignored it.

 “Yeah?” Baby answered, looking down at Buddy with wide eyes.

 “I need to ask you something, and I need you to be completely honest with me when you answer.”

 “Is this really the best way to go about asking him?” Darling asked, sounding exasperated as she flopped down on the couch. Buddy was too fucked up to care about her cynicism.

 “What is it?” Baby sounded bewildered and a little worried. Buddy fished for the right words to say before giving up and pulling Baby down into another kiss, grabbing his hips roughly. He leaned into him for a second before pulling away, placing a hand on Buddy’s chest. “No, seriously. What is it?”

 “He’s high as fuck and he wants to know if you want to go to Italy with us. We’re leaving soon. On a related note, I think he’s having an existential crisis about his age,” Darling said, not looking up from her phone. “We just did coke with his ex-lover from two decades ago.”

 “Oh, Mr. Matherne?” Baby asked, and Darling nodded solemnly.

 “This is a bigger deal than you two are making it out to be,” Buddy said, putting his own hand over the one Baby had braced on his chest.

 “No, it’s not,” Baby and Darling said in sync, before turning and grinning at each other. Buddy sighed, rubbing his face with his free hand. Baby moved in close to him and wrapped his arms around Buddy, kissing his forehead softly.

 “You know I don’t like it when you do that,” Buddy said without opening his eyes. “It makes me feel inferior.”

 “It shouldn’t,” Baby said in his ear. “You don’t have to protect me _all_ the time, Buddy. Sometimes I can protect you too.”

 “Like right now,” Darling chimed in. “You can protect him from his own stupid brain. Now, what do you want on this pizza?”

 “Bell peppers,” Baby said, before kissing Buddy again. Unlike earlier, this kiss wasn’t explicitly sexual. It was gentle and comforting and, in Buddy’s opinion, it didn’t last nearly long enough.

 “Pepperoni,” Buddy said, as soon as Baby pulled away. This made the other man smile, soft and slow.

 “Oh my God, you two are useless. I’ll take it from here,” Darling said, rolling her eyes. Her tone was unbearably fond.

 “We’re probably going to be eating a lot of pizza in Italy, Darling. Are you sure this is the best choice for dinner?” Baby asked, his nose brushing against Buddy’s.

 “There’s no such thing as too much pizza,” she replied wisely, and Baby shrugged his approval.

 “I can vouch for that.”

 Buddy lasted about another twenty seconds before he was forced to interject again. His mind was clearing up enough for Baby’s close proximity to not be a crippling distraction. The track playing in the background switched to Weezer.

 “Baby, I don’t want to take you away from your future.”

 “Jason,” Baby said, taking Buddy’s hand and moving it to his own neck, directly over his tattoo. “ _You_ are my future. I love you. Both of you. You know that.”

 The fact that Baby had used Buddy’s real name – something he only ever did when he was trying to make a point (or having an orgasm) – was jarring enough to clear Buddy’s head.

 “I… okay. You’re an adult. I’ll trust your judgement on this.”

“Thank you, Daddy.” Buddy flushed bright red. The kid smirked, knowing damn well what he’d done. That word (in Baby’s _accent_ ) caused a Pavlovian response that Buddy was not proud of. He had half a mind to push the kid off of him, but then Darling joined their embrace, wrapping her arms around them both and resting her head on Baby’s arm.

“Aw, Buddy. Our Baby’s growing up.”

“Oh, say it ain’t so,” Buddy said in time with the music. Baby smiled at him harder than Buddy had ever seen him smile before.

**Author's Note:**

> I was conflicted about posting a sequel to LLIV (because I liked how things left off) but I'm in way too deep now lmao
> 
> This part is kind of an interlude. I'll post the third and final part soon! It's already half written. 
> 
> (On another note, I'm seeing Baby Driver for the fifth fucking time in theaters tonight. Pray for me.)
> 
> hmu on tumblr at bradmoshpitt.tumblr.com if you're so inclined


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